Meetups: Organizing Social Events 🍺
Depending where you're from you'll say "let's have a coffee", "let's meet for tea", "let's go for tapas"... all you want is to share a human moment with someone else. Meetups can be that simple too.
That’s it, you decided to start building your community. And now you’re left wondering where and how to actually begin. I recommend keeping it simple: run social events!
Articles Of The Series
Meetups: Organizing Social Events 🍺 YOU ARE HERE 📍
More to follow in the coming months ⚡️
The Simplest Forms of Social Events
We briefly covered social events in my first article of the series on running Community Events. These can be as simple as meeting in a bar, cafe or park for a few drinks.
Beer 2 Beer meetups 🍺
Coffee Chats meetups ☕️
Hang In The Park 🌱
As an organizer, these events are awesome because of many reasons:
No booking required 🎉
No budget required 🎉
Easy to find venues 🎉
Easy scale up venues 🎉
No work - or almost - for you during the event 🎉
It cannot get easier than that.
All it takes is for you to find place, decide a date and publish the event. Voila.
When Do You Want To Run This Type Of Events?
Three occasions when these are ideals:
When you’ve just launched a community. For instance you can run such event type once every 2-3 weeks for 2 months, once you get a bit of traction you can start organizing more advanced events.
When you’re just too busy with life and just want to keep some momentum going with your community events.
Right after a ‘more complex’ event. Yes, same day/evening. For instance you first organise a talk in a coworking space from 19:00 and head to a restaurant at 21:00. That’s exactly what I do for most of my events in Barcelona.
Meal At A Restaurant
It’s a slightly more advanced event type as you need to coordinate with a venue manager, book in advanced and so on.
Whether brunch, lunch or dinner it’s always a good idea to gather around tasty food. There is something more civilized about sharing a meal that creates a special dynamic.
No Budget Required 🎉
Most restaurants do NOT require payment when booking. And each person can pay for his/her own consumption.
Quite easy to find venues 🎉
Requires in-person visit though.
Requires booking 😕
Their chef needs to be ready for this surge of customers and may even have to hire extra hands for the occasion.
Best Practice When Booking/Planning
Always go visit the place in-person to get a sense of the number of people it can accommodate, and whether the vibe matches your expectations.
1 week before, go in-person & ask to speak to the manager and book the venue for a very approximate expected number of attendees.
Ask the restaurant what days are best for welcoming groups 👥
Each restaurant has different « down days » where only few customers turn up. You want to book on such day so that you have the place almost 100% for yourself. Some will also give your group special discounts for booking on such day. Usually Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays work well.Agree on discount. Can be possible in some places, just try & ask “do you do group discounts?“.
Agree on payment handled by the restaurant and being responsible for billing each person correctly.
Some restaurant accept payment from each customer when they place their order, especially those that are bars too, it’s the method the most likely to avoid any mistakes and misunderstandings.
Another thing you can do is to split the group in several tables (subgroups) and make the waiter responsible for tracking each table/subgroup.24-48H before, call the restaurant to confirm the expected number of attendees. It’s usually fine if you give an approximation.
What To Watch Out For
Annoying owner and/or manager 😤 If the owner or manager you’re discussing with is not very keen for groups, it might be a red flag. There’s no need to force things, if you try the place once and feel that they were a bit unhappy of the extra work then you better never come back.
Group bills 😫 It makes you responsible for footing the bill if someone does not pay or if there is a mistake in the accounting. At the beginning of the event, triple check that waiters bill each person individually and are responsible for keeping correct accounting (not you). A work around is to split the group in several tables, with each table being 1 separate bill, it makes mistakes much easier to spot.
Group menus. Means that everyone must order more or less the same thing and at a fixed price. That sucks. Some people are less hungry. Some are vegetarians. And so on. Do not accept this.
Restaurants outside the price range of your community members. In doubt, share the menu with a few members and ask them what they think of it.
Cherry on top: if it’s a dinner, look for a bar nearby the restaurant to go to afterwards.
That’s it. You know pretty much everything there is to know about organizing social events for your community. I hope this will help you get started with less fear!
Gratitude 🙏 Thanks for reading. If you feel extra helpful, feel free to say "thank you too" by following me on twitter 🐦 twitter.com/AdrienBe_
Articles Of The Series
Meetups: Organizing Social Events 🍺 YOU ARE HERE 📍
More to follow in the coming months ⚡️
All My Articles 🗞